Feedback to students has been identified as a key strategy in learning and teaching, but we know less about how feedback is understood by students. The purpose of this study is to gain more insight into lower secondary students' perceptions of when and how they find classroom feedback useful. This article draws on data generated through individual…

This study was an empirically substantive examination of mathematics achievement differences between urban and rural Taiwanese students at a cognitive attribute level. Participants were eighth-grade students who participated in the "Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study" of 1999. The rule-space method was applied to produce a…

An achievement test score can be viewed as a joint function of skill and will, of knowledge and motivation. However, when interpreting and using test scores, the "will" part is not always acknowledged and scores are mostly interpreted and used as pure measures of student knowledge. This paper argues that students' motivation to do their best on…

This study was designed to explore children's understanding of formative assessment and its effects on their learning, in order to establish what learners perceive as important to help them improve their learning. The study found that children have a good understanding of the concepts of feedback, and can articulate clearly the elements most…

Self-determination theory provides an integrated conception of school- and academic motivation. The theory proposes a continuum comprising three types of motivation: intrinsic motivation (IM), extrinsic motivation (EM), and amotivation (AM), characterised by seven dimensions (IM = to know, to accomplish and to experience stimulation, EM = external…

This study was designed to examine the extent to which "content" accounts for variance in scores assigned in automated essay scoring protocols. Specifically it was hypothesised that certain writing genre would emphasise content more than others. Data were drawn from 1668 essays calibrated at two grade levels (6 and 8) using "e-rater[TM]", an…

This study considered middle school mathematics teachers use of rubrics to score non-traditional tasks. A group of eighth-grade teachers attended a two-day workshop where they evaluated assessment tasks and discussed the use of an associated scoring rubric. Scored samples of student work submitted by the teachers indicated that they had difficulty…

A diagnostic model for large-scale assessment was applied to TIMSS data to compare mathematics performance of eighth graders from three countries--the US, Singapore, and Israel. Compared were attribute mastery probabilities for content, skills and cognitive processes underlying students' performance on the 1999 TIMSS-R mathematics test. Also…